The problem with food porn tourism:
You may think snapping food photos is innocent fun, especially while trying new dishes on vacation. But some chefs are starting to fight back, ruling no cameras at the dinner table.
We’ve all seen them. The waiter plops a gorgeous plate of sumptuous food on the table but, rather than taking out a fork and knife to tuck in, they grab their cellphone and snap a photo. Within minutes, it has been hashtagged #foodporn or #cameraeatsfirst and posted to Tubmlr, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. By the time they’ve shared their gourmet delight with the world, the food is cold, and the chef is grumpy. The phenomenon of photographing food is known as food porn, and just like the “other” porn, it is highly addictive.
I confess I posted this mostly because the phrase "food porn tourism" tickles me, but can we stop with the cameras already? I don't want to see your ugly selfie mug, and I have no burning desire to see the food on the table in front of you. I read somewhere recently that the selfie craze has led to a big increase in plastic surgery and thought, "Yeah, figures."
I may have mentioned before that I have my own food porn -- cookbooks, of which I have more than 200. And I hardly ever use the things. It's so much easier to google something like, oh, "bean soup recipes' and get almost 14 million hits almost instantaneously than it is to spend half the evening slogging through a dozen cookbooks. But I love thumbing through them, drooling over the color photographs of pot roasts and chocolate cakes.
You have your addictions and I have mine, 'K?
